Page images
PDF
EPUB

the amulet, it may not spare us; it will be unsure to rely on any preservative, it is no security to be dipped in Styx, or clad in the armour of Ceneus. Now that beer, wine, and other liquors, are spoiled with lightning and thunder, we conceive it proceeds not only from noise and concussion of the air, but also noxious spirits which mingle therewith, and draw them to corruption; whereby they become not only dead themselves, but sometimes deadly unto others, as that which Seneca mentioneth; whereof whosoever drank, either lost his life or else his wits upon it.

7. It hath much deceived the hopes of good fellows, what is commonly expected of bitter almonds; and though in Plutarch confirmed from the practice of Claudius his physician, that antidote against ebriety hath commonly failed. Surely men much versed in the practice do err in the theory of inebriation; conceiving in that disturbance the brain doth only suffer from exhalations and vaporous ascensions from the stomach, which fat and oily substances may suppress; whereas the prevalent intoxication is from the spirits of drink dispersed into the veins and arteries; from whence by common conveyances they creep into the brain, insinuate into its ventricles, and beget those vertigoes accompanying

shattered the left hand, fused the gold shirt buttons, and tore the clothes in a most extraordinary manner, forcing parts of them, together with the buttons, to a considerable distance, and a deep wound was inflicted under its position on the wrist. The arm was laid bare to the elbow, which is presumed to have been at the moment very near his left waistcoat-pocket, in which there was a knife; this also was forced from its situation, and forced on the ground; a severe wound was made on his body, and every article of dress torn away as if it had been done by gunpowder. From the knife it passed to the iron of the seat, wounding his back, and setting fire to his clothes in its passage. Another portion descended to the right arm, which had hold of the lower part of the stick of the umbrella; was attracted by the sleeve-button, where it made a wound, but slight, compared to that on the left, passed down the arm (which it merely discoloured, and broke the skin of in two small places) to a gold pencil-case in the right waistcoat-pocket. The great coat he had on was torn to pieces, and the coat immediately above the waistcoat-pocket much rent; but the waistcoat itself was merely perforated; on the external part, where the discharge entered by a hole about the size of a pea, and on the inside by a similar hole at the other extremity of the pencil-case, where it passed out, setting fire to his trousers and drawers, and inflicting a deep wound round his back, the whole of which was literally flayed."

[blocks in formation]

that perversion. And therefore the same effect may be produced by a glister; the head may be intoxicated by a medicine at the heel. So the poisonous bites of serpents, although on parts at distance from the head, yet having entered the veins, disturb the animal faculties, and produce the effects of drink, or poison swallowed. And so, as the head may be disturbed by the skin, it may the same way be relieved; as is observable in balneations, washings, and fomentations, either of the whole body, or of that part alone.1

CHAPTER VII.2

Of some insects, and the properties of several plants :-of the death-watch; the presages drawn from oak-apple insects; whether all plants have seeds; whether the sap of trees runs to the ground in winter; of the effects of camphor; with many others.

1.3 FEW ears have escaped the noise of the death-watch, that is, the little clickling sound heard often in many rooms, somewhat resembling that of a watch; and this is conceived to be of an evil omen or prediction of some person's death: wherein notwithstanding there is nothing of rational presage or just cause of terror unto melancholy and meticulous heads. For this noise is made by a little sheathwinged grey insect, found often in wainscot benches and wood-work in the summer. We have taken many thereof, and kept them in thin boxes, wherein I have heard and seen them

9 by the skin.] Affections of the skin.—Wr.

1 that part alone.] The most present way of bringing the drunken to the use of his senses, is to apply large sponges dipt in strong white wine vinegar, which a Doctor of Physic, of prime note and name, does assure mee is, upon manifold experience, found most true; yf they be for a while applied not to the head, but to the testicles.- Wr.

2 Chap. vII.] A considerable portion of the contents of this chapter was added in the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th editions: the rest formed the conclusion of chap. VI. in the 1st edition, and was first made a separate chapter in the 2nd edition.

§ 1.] Added in the 6th edition, as also the 7th paragraph: the intervening five, and the four succeeding ones, appeared first in the

[blocks in formation]

work and knock with a little proboscis or trunk against the side of the box, like a picus martius, or woodpecker against a tree. It worketh best in warm weather, and for the most part giveth not over under nine or eleven strokes at a time. He that could extinguish the terrifying apprehensions hereof, might prevent the passions of the heart, and many cold sweats in grandmothers and nurses, who, in the sickness of children, are so startled with these noises.

2. The presage of the year succeeding, which is commonly made from insects or little animals in oak-apples, according to the kinds thereof, either maggot, fly or spider; that is, of famine, war, or pestilence; whether we mean that woody excrescence, which shooteth from the branch about May, or that round and apple-like accretion which groweth under the leaf about the latter end of summer, is, I doubt, too distinct, nor verifiable from event.

For flies and maggots are found every year, very seldom spiders and Helmont affirmeth, he could never find the spider and the fly upon the same trees, that is the signs of war and pestilence, which often go together: beside, that the flies found were at first maggots, experience hath informed us; for keeping these excrescences, we have observed their conversions, beholding in magnifying glasses the daily progression thereof. As may be also observed in other vegetable excretions, whose maggots do terminate in flies of constant shapes; as in the nut-galls of the outlandish oak, and the mossy tuft of the wild briar; which having gathered in November, we have found the little maggots, which lodged in wooden cells all winter, to turn into flies in June.5

We confess the opinion may hold some verity in the analogy, or emblematical fancy. For pestilence is properly signified by the spider, whereof some kinds are of a very venomous nature; famine by maggots, which destroy the fruits of the earth; and war not improperly by the fly, if we rest in the fancy of Homer, who compares the valiant Grecian unto a fly.

Some verity it may also have in itself, as truly declaring the corruptive constitution in the present sap and nutrimental juice of the tree; and may consequently discover the

5 flies in June.] Of the genus Cynips.

disposition of that year, according to the plenty or kinds of these productions. For if the putrefying juices of bodies bring forth plenty of flies and maggots, they give forth testimony of common corruption, and declare that the elements are full of the seeds of putrefaction, as the great number of caterpillars, gnats, and ordinary insects do also declare. If they run into spiders, they give signs of higher putrefaction, as plenty of vipers and scorpions are confessed to do; the putrefying materials producing animals of higher mischiefs, according to the advance and higher strain of corruption.

3. Whether all plants have seed, were more easily deter minable, if we could conclude concerning hartstongue,? fern, the capillaries, lunaria, and some others. But whether those little dusty particles, upon the lower side of the leaves, be seeds and seminal parts; or rather, as it is commonly conceived, excremental separations; we have not as yet been able to determine by any germination or univocal production from them when they have been sowed on purpose; but having set the roots of hartstongue in a garden, a year or two after, there came up three or four of the same plants, about two yards distance from the first. Thus much we ob serve, that they seem to renew yearly, and come not fully out till the plant be in its vigour; and, by the help of mag nifying glasses, we find these dusty atoms to be round at first, and fully representing seeds, out of which at last proceed little mites almost invisible; so that such as are old stand open, as being emptied of some bodies formerly included; which, though discernable in hartstongue, is more notoriously discoverable in some differences of brake or fern.

But exquisite microscopes and magnifying glasses have at last cleared this doubt, whereby also long ago the noble Fredericus Cæsius beheld the dusts of polypody as big as peppercorns; and as Johannes Faber testifieth, made draughts on paper of such kind of seeds, as big as his glasses repre sented them: and set down such plants under the classes of herbæ tergifatæ, as may be observed in his notable botanical

tables.8

For if the putrefying, &c.] See note at page 196.

7 hartstongue, lunaria.] Scolopendrium and moonwort.

83. Whether all plants have seeds, &c.] This doubt has been cleared

[ocr errors]

4. Whether the sap of trees runs down to the roots in winter, whereby they become naked and grow not; or whether they do not cease to draw any more, and reserve so much as sufficeth for conservation, is not a point indubitable. For we observe, that most trees, as though they would be perpetually green, do bud at the fall of the leaf, although they sprout not much forward until the spring and warmer weather approacheth; and many trees maintain their leaves all winter, although they seem to receive very small advantage in their growth. But [that] the sap doth powerfully rise in the spring, to repair that moisture whereby they barely subsisted in the winter, and also to put the plant in a capacity of fructification, he that hath beheld how many gallons of water may in a small time be drawn from a birch tree in the spring, hath slender reason to doubt.

5. That camphor eunuchates, or begets in men an impotency unto venery, observation will hardly confirm; and we have found it to fail in cocks and hens, though given for many days: which was a more favourable trial than that of Scaliger, when he gave it unto a bitch that was proud. For the instant turgescence is not to be taken off, but by medicines of higher natures; and with any certainty but one way that we know, which notwithstanding, by suppressing that natural evacuation, may incline unto madness, if taken in the

summer.

6. In the history of prodigies we meet with many showers of wheat; how true or probable, we have not room to debate: only thus much we shall not omit to inform; that

up by the laborious investigations of subsequent botanists. Sir James Smith, in speaking of the dorsal ferns, remarks-"The production of perfect germinating seeds, contained in capsules, and consequently produced by impregnated fertile flowers, is as clear in ferns as in mosses.

[ocr errors]

94. Whether the sap, &c.] Du Petit Thouars supposes that the sap begins to move at the extremities of the branches before it stirs at the roots, and this has been confirmed by experience. He theorises that the first budding in spring absorbs the sap from adjacent parts—which draw on those parts still further removed, and so on, till the whole mass of fluid is set in motion down to the roots. Dutrochet has formed a theory to account for the motion of vegetable fluids, by supposing galvanic action. See a curious account of his experiments and deductions, in Lindley's Introd. to Botany, p. 237, 238.

« PreviousContinue »